If you want to do it on the cheap, I would post in the Buy/Sell/Trade section and see if someone's willing to sell you a shave-ready razor and used strop at a good price.
Several years ago, I tried to get into straight shaving by buying some e-bay specials and a 1k/4k waterstone and some generally inferior gear with not great results. I've just recently got into this again, but bought shave ready razors from a good e-bay vendor and quality gear - huge difference.
While I agree that Tony's starter setup is a great deal and everything will last you a lifetime, its a fair chunk of change for a lot of people to drop on stuff they're not sure they're going to use long term.
If you just want to test the waters, this is what it will cost:
1) Shave ready razor - $20 to $30 from a kind-hearted SRP member (the razor will likely not be much to look at, but will shave well). This will save you a bunch of money - if you're really serious about giving this a try, you will quickly want a second razor, but you can make due with one for the first bit.
2) Daily strop - you can buy a starter strop from Tony for $25 or a slightly better one with lether and linen for about $40.
3) A pasted padle strop - this is what you will use to refresh your blade when it starts to dull (even with proper daily stropping a blade will need to be refreshed periodically (for me I do a touch up every 5 shaves or so) on either a fine hone or strop coated in abrasive paste). Tony's 4-sided padles are terrific and will cost you about $60 pre-pasted.
To save a little money, you can buy a pasted padle with three sides covered with pasted leather and one side in unpasted leather for daily stroping - this option would allow you to omit the hanging strop and save a little more money - the downside is you don't get a linen side (which I like, but is not necessary) and you will have to make more laps on than you would a hanging strop as the padle is shorter than a hanging strop. Having said this, padle strops have been around for ages and this seems to confirm that they're fine for daily stroping as well as abrasive pastes.
If you're really on a budget, you can use a piece of wood that has been made perfectly flat (glass or a polished marble/granite tile) with abrasive microgrit sandpaper - this is a pretty cheap way to go, but is not as convenient as the padle strop.
Finally, you will need a shaving brush and soap - to start with, you can use a drugstore boar hair brush and a cake of Williams soap - which should run you less than $10. However, you will almost certainly want to upgrade to a badger hair brush and these start out at about $30 for anything decent, but there are some deals out there - these guys have some boar brushes on sale for $1.5 and some better ones for $8http://www.cottonblossomcrafts.com/e...ng_brushes.htm - but most drug stores or Target stores carry perfectly serviceable boar brushes for well under $10.
So, unless you can get some good used kit, here's what I think what I think you could get away with to try straight shaving with the right gear (right being what you really need to properly maintain your razor for the first few months at least).
Used shave-ready razor - $20 - $30
Padle strop (3 sides pasted, one side with plain leather) $55
Brush & soap - $10.
Total: $85 to $95 plus shipping.
If you really wanted to do it on the cheap, you could by one of Tony's bench hones with one side pasted and the other side in plain leather for about $30. However, you will almost certainly want to upgrade to the padle and/or hanging strop, so I would recomend the paddle - also, if you decide you don't like straight shaving, the paddle can likely be sold here for %50 to %75 percent of what you paid for it if you've only had it for a month or two and haven't cut it up.
Good luck.